Friday, 31 July 2015

Despite having by far the most liberal record of anyone in the GOP race, Trump has become a hero among the populist Right, even as the conservative base is reputed to have become ever more rigid in its demands for radicalism and ideological conformity. Maybe Trump’s conservative supporters are dupes and fools, or maybe they are making fools of the rest of us.

Trump could not be more of a hypocrite and a fraud, but the revelations of his past liberalism (and even his past sogginess on immigration) have done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of his conservative fans. For the moment, accusations of hypocrisy cannot bring Trump down because his fans are in a rebellious mood, and Trump’s hypocrisy is a grotesque parody of the dishonesty of “real” politicians. The examples of political cynicism abound. There is Hillary Clinton supporting and then opposing the Iraq War depending on the war’s popularity. There are Obama’s repeated, politically motivated, changes of position on gay marriage. Trump’s explanation for his change of opinion on abortion is, if anything, more plausible and affecting than Mitt Romney’s.

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This is not to let Trump’s supporters off the hook. The Trump phenomenon is an example of what Fredrik deBoer called “a kind of performative idiocy in which the other side’s exaggerated definition of what you and your people are becomes the ideal you hope to reach, precisely because your opponents dislike what they have made of you.” On the left, this tendency takes the form of social-justice warriors engaging in competitive sandbox Stalinism to see who can become the best little commissar on the Internet by best policing the actions, words, and identities of anyone unlucky enough to get their attention.

On the right, this tendency has taken an even stranger turn. Despairing of convincing the median American, or of advancing their preferences through the political system, some populist conservatives have adopted the Yippie (Youth International Party) style of making theatrical gestures to demonstrate their alienation from the rest of society. The Yippies ran the mascot Pigasus as their presidential candidate. The whole point of running Pigasus was to underline what they saw as the absurdity and futility of conventional electoral politics. Trump, as both the leader and the mascot of his movement, is playing a similar role. Telling Trump supporters about his opportunism would be like having told the Yippies that their candidate was too young to be president, and a pig. They know. That’s why it’s funny.

Thursday, 30 July 2015

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential hopeful who shot up to the head of the pack over his controversial comments about illegal immigrants, is finally starting to lay out an immigration policy.

Trump said Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that as president he would deport all undocumented immigrants and then allow the “good ones” to reenter the country through an “expedited process” and live in the U.S. legally, though not as citizens.

You know, the “good ones,” the ones who are willing to work for billionaires at low wages and who haven’t raped anyone ... yet.

Reminder: There’s still one candidate who is willing to limit legal immigration to rebuild our economy.

Meanwhile, here’s Mickey Kaus’s review of Ann Coulter’s immigration book, which elaborates on the question of immigration and the economy.

How proud is Planned Parenthood of its “fetal tissue” research involving body parts harvested from aborted babies? So proud that its organ procurement partner just asked a California court to ban the release of at least one video about its baby organ harvesting operations. And the court agreed.

The Los Angeles Superior Court issued late Wednesday night a temporary restraining order against the Center for Medical Progress. Under the terms of the order, the non-profit organization is banned from releasing video of a May lunch attended by three StemExpress officials, according to the Associated Press.

Wednesday, 29 July 2015

Ronald Reagan’s cult of personality remains strong and deep on the right, and I count myself a member of it. But what often gets lost in all the talk of the Gipper’s adamantine convictions and timeless principles is the simple fact that he was also a really good politician. Barry Goldwater was every bit as principled as Reagan, but Reagan was by far the better politician. That’s at least partly why Goldwater lost in a stunning landslide in 1964 and why Reagan was a two-term political juggernaut. Reagan won votes from moderates, independents, and lots of Democrats.

To listen to many conservative activists today, we need a candidate as principled as Reagan to save the country, but you rarely hear of the need for a politician as good as Reagan.

[Connecticut] Commissioner of Motor Vehicles Andres Ayala issued a public apology Monday for a July 10 email that directed driving school operators not to tell customers that increased waiting times for state licensing tests have been caused by a new DMV program to give driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants.

The email from the DMV's driver education unit to scores of driving schools had falsely stated that the increased waits didn't relate to the new program. It claimed that “additional staff was hired and appointments were added to allow for testing of undocumented applicants without negatively affecting test scheduling for legal residents of Connecticut.”

Waiting times for state driver-licensing tests have tripled since last year — last week, many applicants for a test to get a learner's permit were being scheduled for mid-October — and complaints about it prompted an unusual response from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

In Monday's email to the same driving schools, Ayala said: “Our July 10 e-mail was incorrect in a statement made regarding delays in our testing appointments. Our attempt was to put the situation into context. However, it also presented a directive. We apologize for asking the driving schools to refrain from talking about this issue.”

The first response of leftists to reality intruding on their plans is to tell people to shut up about reality. I recall the Obambicare rollout.

There’s a world of difference between assets and income. Some people in government don’t understand that, and it may have been a contributing factor here:

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave low-income housing to millionaires, according to a recent audit.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) found over 25,000 families who earned too much to qualify for subsidized apartments, which will cost taxpayers $104.4 million this year.

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A millionaire in Oxford, Neb., has been able live in low-income housing since 2010. The monthly rent is $300.

“As of April 2014, the single-member household’s annual income was $65,007, while the low-income threshold was $33,500,” the OIG explained. “Also, this tenant had total assets valued at nearly $1.6 million, which included stock valued at $623,685, real estate valued at $470,600, a checking account with a balance of $334,637, and an individual retirement account with a balance of $123,445.”

Someone could have over a million in investments with deferred returns (like zero coupon bonds and growth stocks that don’t pay dividends) and still sneak in under the $33,500 limit. Paying the property taxes on $470,600 in real estate would take a bite out of that.

In Germany, you must be able to tell the gender of the child by the first name, and the name chosen must not be negatively affect the well being of the child. Also, you can not use last names or the names of objects or products as first names. Whether or not your chosen name will be accepted is up to the office of vital statistics, the Standesamt, in the area in which the child was born. ... When evaluating names, the Standesamt refers to a book which translates to “the international manual of the first names,” and they also consult foreign embassies for assistance with non-German names. Because of the hassle parents have to go through to name their children, many opt for traditional names such as Maximilian, Alexander, Marie, and Sophie.

Facebook Inc. was ordered by a German privacy watchdog to allow users to have accounts under pseudonyms on the social network.

Facebook may not unilaterally change such accounts to the real names of users and may not block them, Johannes Caspar, Hamburg’s data regulator, said in an e-mailed statement. The company, whose European headquarters are in Ireland, can’t argue it’s only subject to that country’s law, he said.

Monday, 27 July 2015

Fundamentally, AFFH is an attempt to achieve economic integration. Race and ethnicity are being used as proxies for class, since these are the only hooks for social engineering provided by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Like AFFH itself, today’s Washington Post piece blurs the distinction between race and class, conflating the persistence of “concentrated poverty” with housing discrimination by race. Not being able to afford a freestanding house in a bedroom suburb is no proof of racial discrimination. Erstwhile urbanites have been moving to rustic and spacious suburbs since Cicero built his villa outside Rome. Even in a monoracial and mono-ethnic world, suburbanites would zone to set limits on dense development.

Moving poor people next to wealthier ones doesn’t change their behavior.

The plan has three elements: 1) Inhibit suburban growth, and when possible encourage suburban re-migration to cities. This can be achieved, for example, through regional growth boundaries (as in Portland), or by relative neglect of highway-building and repair in favor of public transportation. 2) Force the urban poor into the suburbs through the imposition of low-income housing quotas. 3) Institute “regional tax-base sharing,” where a state forces upper-middle-class suburbs to transfer tax revenue to nearby cities and less-well-off inner-ring suburbs (as in Minneapolis/St. Paul).

There is much that Congress can do, and much that you can do to make sure Congress acts.

First, Congress needs to hold hearings on AFFH. The mainstream press has been straining to avoid AFFH. Let’s see if we can give them a story they’ll find hard to ignore. HUD Secretary Julian Castro needs to be called to answer questions before Congress on AFFH.

Second, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar has introduced a stand-alone bill called the Local Zoning and Property Rights Protection Act of 2015, H.R. 1995. This bill not only cancels AFFH and its intrusive and controlling “Assessment Tool,” it instructs HUD Secretary Castro to consult with local officials across the country on how to further the objective of fair housing, without new regulations.

The House has already passed Rep. Gosar’s amendment to the Transportation Housing and Urban Development Bill defunding AFFH. Yet the fate of the THUD bill remains in doubt. It may be considered by the Senate as separate legislation, or it may ultimately be bundled into another big Omnibus bill.